


Day 22: Crestwood

by CommonEvilMastermind



Series: Sollavellan Hell Art Challenge 2020 [4]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Crestwood fix it, F/M, have some feels, solavellan hell art challenge 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24026764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommonEvilMastermind/pseuds/CommonEvilMastermind
Summary: Crestwood, but she's known all along.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Series: Sollavellan Hell Art Challenge 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721170
Comments: 7
Kudos: 59





	Day 22: Crestwood

Ellara Lavellan watched him teeter, watched him walk the edge of - something. She could not guess the shape of it. The wall he built around himself cracked, but did not falter. Oh, she could see glimpses. When he kissed her and it felt like he was breaking. When he whispered, _ar lath,_ as if it were a secret. She loved him best as she could and hoped that he could see it, hoped that he would trust her, hoped that he would choose.

Hoped that she would be enough.

In the end, she wasn't.

"I can't," he said desperately. "I'm sorry." He held up his hands, as if to ward her away.

"No," she said, and it caught in her throat. "Don't - not now. Solas-"

"I can't," he said, almost begging. Then he turned. He began to leave.

"Don't," she whispered. "Don't! Please!" A pit opened in her belly, lurching with anger. "Solas!" Her voice broke on the word and she hated it, hated the tears as they burned down her cheeks. How had she been so foolish?

"I never should have trusted you," she spat, cold venom. "Run, then, with your tail between your legs. Fucking wolf. Fucking Fen'Harel."

He froze, as if turned to stone. 

"You told me I was your heart. You told me that you loved me. It wasn't true, was it? Just another trick. Just another lie." The words burned off of her tongue, hot now, and angry. "Are you proud of yourself? Going to go off and laugh at the foolishness of the Dalish? Of mortals? Of women? Are you-"

He turned, and the poison died on her lips.

"You know," Solas said, as if he was not breathing.

"I - " She was wrong-footed, off-kilter. "That you're-"

"You know?" There was a catch in his voice, the tiniest hitch of a knife-edged balance.

She looked at him blankly. "I know. Of course I know."

"When?" he demanded, voice rising. "How?"

This made her angry again. "I have your soul in the palm of my hand, your memories, your dreams-! I cannot escape your dreaming. Did you think, did you think you were _subtle_? You're a failure as the god of lies - born in a village? Untrained? You painted yourself all over the walls of the rotunda - I carry the Well of Sorrows in my head and you think I _didn't know?_ " One look at his stricken expression and she sighed. "I've always known."

He stared at her impossibly, took a step towards her. 

He fell to his knees.

"Solas!" she swore and scrambled to him. His eyes were wide and frozen, shoulders heaving.

"You know," he whispered, "You _know._ "

"Solas..." she reached out and touched him, gently. When he made no reaction, she pulled at him, carefully, until his head lay like a stone on her shoulder. "You stupid idiot," she murmured, with the tiniest kiss on the spot behind his ear. 

He drew in a ragged breath and - impossibly, alarmingly - the Dread Wolf began to weep.

"I've got you," she said, for lack of anything better to say. "I've got you."

He was not beautiful when he cried. The sobs tore through him, wretched and ugly. They crashed like a storm, like a dam that had broken, and she was the bulwark that kept the waters from sweeping him away. He gasped hot tears onto her shoulder, his hands scrabbling the ground. She pulled him closer and he held the back of her coat with such force she thought that it would tear. 

She held him, rocking softly. He thought she didn't know. How afraid he must have been. And his reluctance - not for her own failing, for her tattoos or her Dalish nature, but because he thought to tell her was to lose her. Was to drive her away.

She snorted at this. "Did you think that I would leave you?" she murmured into his ear. His hands spasmed, clung more tightly. "Did you think that I would hate you? Fear you? Try to fight you?" He wept, and she let her tears fall with him. "I have known since before I loved you. Since the beginning. You are my heart, all of you, for everything you are and everything you have been, ar lath ma, vhenan, ma'fen." She kissed all that she could reach - the back of his neck. "I'm here for you, if you'll trust me. You don't have to do it all alone."

His breath steadied, if slowly. She shifted them down to the ground tucking his head against her other, dryer shoulder. He held onto her with an iron grip that stole the breath from her lungs. "I've got you, I've got you," she murmured. "I'm not letting go."


End file.
